


Silicon Valley and the Zombie Apocalypse

by lies_d



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Gen, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 05:30:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10824765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lies_d/pseuds/lies_d
Summary: While the guys are out camping, the end of civilization strikes.





	Silicon Valley and the Zombie Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the SV Against Tyranny fundraiser for CAIR and the ACLU.

When they arrived late to the rental centre, they missed the last decent tent and were forced to rent an oversized yurt. Everything went downhill from there. 

They set up the yurt at their campsite, which took forever. They started a fire with everyone arguing about how to do it. Then Jared cooked them a meal of beans and veggie dogs, which honestly just weren’t that good.

After eating they sat in silence around the campfire, even though they had made plans to roast marshmallows and tell stories.

Richard started to feel sick. It began with a vague feeling not unlike indigestion, which he blamed on the beans. Then came a wave of fatigue. Then very suddenly he felt a deep chill that made his teeth rattle, but he was too tired to go into the yurt to get a blanket. By the time the hot flashes started coming, he realized something might be wrong.

“Hey guys. I’m not feeling so good,” said Dinesh weakly. “Can somebody drive me back to the ranger’s station?”

Richard’s vision was starting to swim. He was sure he wasn’t in any condition to drive, and neither, it seemed, was anybody else. 

“I think Jared packed some Aspirin,” Richard finally answered. “Jared?” He looked over to see Jared curled up on himself, his forehead resting against his knees.

“Jared? You okay?” Richard asked. 

Jared lifted his head. “I’m fine. I’m fine,” he said, even though he was clearly not fine. He shivered despite the sweat beading on his forehead, and his breath came in shallow, panting gulps. He gave a reassuring smile in Richard’s direction, his eyes not focused in the least, then he put his head back down.

Gilfoyle’s beer tumbled out of his lap, spilling all over the ground. Erlich fell off of his log.  

Richard had just enough energy to look up and watch the sun setting on what he would remember as the last day.

~~~

Richard woke up a few days later. Jared was dripping water into his mouth with a the tip of a cloth. Before even opening his eyes, he reached out to pull the cloth into his mouth, sucking in as much moisture as he could get. 

Jared helped him sit up and take a few long sips from his water bottle. 

“Slowly - drink slowly or you’ll make yourself sick,” Jared cautioned.

Blearily, Richard looked around. They were in the yurt. It was morning. Jared was awake and Erlich was sitting up, but Dinesh and Gilfoyle were still unconscious. 

“What happened?” he asked. 

“I’m not exactly sure,” Jared said. “We all became very, very ill. I woke up last night and we were still lying outside. Erlich helped move everyone in here. We tried to call for help but our phones are dead.”

“And my clothes are?” Richard asked, noting that he was naked under his blanket.

“Outside somewhere? You were pretty delirious - I think you took them off yourself.”

Richard supposed that was probably for the best. His skin reeked of sweat and vomit and god knew what else. He leaned on Jared all the way out to the stream so he could clean off and get dressed, and by the time he got back, Dinesh and Gilfoyle were sitting up dazedly. Nobody had the energy to do much other than rest and rehydrate. By evening, after they’d eaten some of their dry food, they turned their thoughts towards packing up and getting the hell home. 

But then, they were interrupted by zombies.

Two zombies, to be precise. They came shuffling out of the woods, leaning towards them, all grey skin and glassy eyes and organs hanging out of gaping wounds.

“Hey. Can we, um, help you with something?” Richard asked. Although his instincts were screaming at him, his rational mind couldn’t quite make sense of what he was seeing.

“They don’t need help, they need an undertaker. Those are fucking zombies!” sputtered Dinesh. 

Jared grabbed Richard’s shoulder and pulled him back, and they all scrambled into the Aviato van. 

“Go go go!” Dinesh urged while Erlich fumbled around in his pockets for the keys.

But as it turned out, Erlich didn’t have the keys. They only just managed to lock the doors before the zombies reached the van and started hurling themselves against it, over and over, in an effort to get inside.

“Yep. Those are zombies,” Gilfoyle commented. Up close, that much was clear.

“I don’t care if they’re mutant vampire bigfeet, they’re getting their disgusting effluence all over my van!” To everyone’s horror, Erlich unbuckled his seat belt, opened his door, and stepped outside. 

“Hey! Over here!” he shouted, waving his arms. The zombies followed him over to the campfire, where he picked up a log and proceeded to bash their heads in. 

“Holy shit,” Richard summed up everyone’s feelings when he approached Erlich, who was covered in and surrounded by putrid blood. 

“I know, right? I’ve always been curious to know what it was like murder someone without, you know, having to face the moral dilemma of taking a life,” said Erlich, still breathing hard. 

“It is a very basic urge,” commented Jared.

Minds still reeling from all that had happened, they dutifully packed up their yurt to bring back to the rental place. Richard wondered how they were going to explain this to the rangers, and whether or not they would be believed. 

Once Erlich found his keys and they were headed down the road, they turned on the radio, and it became clear to all of them that this wasn’t a simple isolated incident of two zombies lurking in the woods. This was the fucking world now.

Every radio station in operation was broadcasting news alerts, death metal, or elevator muzak. It was the end of civilization.

“Where will we go?” Jared asked, the only one brave enough to think about what this meant for their future.

“Get out of the cities! Stay out of the cities! If there’s anyone out there, for the love of God, save yourselves!” One frantic newscaster shouted over the background noise of zombies beating down the studio door. 

“Not back to Palo Alto, that’s for fucking sure,” said Erlich, who stopped the van so they could take a breather and think.

They ended up going to the ranger’s station after all. It was Richard’s idea. There were zombies there, but not many. They all worked together this time. When it was over they were just as filthy as Erlich, panting and heaving, surrounded by a pile of organs and crushed zombie parts.

“Stop, Jared -  _ stop _ .” Richard said. 

With a scary look on his face, Jared was beating his zombie into a fine pulp. At Richard’s voice, he stopped and shook himself out of his rage-fit. 

“Okay,” Richard said. “Let’s look around.”

They set up camp again, so to speak. Not only did the ranger’s station have secure walls and a lock on the door, it had clean water and a generator. There was even a little bit of food. 

They survived another night. And another after that. They were one of the few lucky ones. 

~~~

“Sun’s going down. We should head back,” said Richard.

“One more. I’ve got a good feeling about the next one,” Erlich insisted.

They were on a hunting & gathering mission. Hunting zombies and scavenging from their campsites. These excursions had taken them through the entire year out here in the wilderness.

To be fair, Jared was mostly responsible for getting them through the year. It turned out that he was the only one who knew how to use the guns they found in the park rangers’ weapons locker (nobody dared ask him how he’d learned). He could hunt, he could trap, he could fish, and he could skin and gut small animals in less than a minute -- though he himself subsisted on a diet of mostly nuts and berries. So they rarely lacked for food. What they wanted from the abandoned campsites was everything else they couldn’t get:

Weed. Alcohol. Caffeine. Painkillers. Uppers. Downers. (It was amazing what some people packed for a few nights in the wilderness.) Batteries. Salt. And sometimes a few rare, precious pieces of pornography. 

“I vote we go back” said Jared, agreeing with Richard as he always did and would. “We only found two zombies and this tent is made for eight. I think there might be more around and I don’t want to have to fight in the dark.”

Erlich sighed and looked to Gilfoyle and Dinesh. 

“I vote we try another site,” said Gilfoyle, who excelled at killing zombies. He had yet to sustain a single scratch in fighting them, and feared zombies neither in the day or at night.  

Dinesh folded his arms. He was less good at killing zombies, and had in fact had been saved from zombies by Gilfoyle -- not once but twice. Which perversely had only deepened the rivalry between them. Which meant that they often voted against each other just out of spite.  _ Which meant _ that when there was a disagreement between Erlich and Richard, Richard almost always won. 

“Yeah, I vote we go home. We got enough stuff on this trip. Let’s go dig into those saltines,” said Dinesh.

Erlich huffed in frustration. “Fine. Cowards.” He stomped back to the van.

If Jared wasn’t both their meal ticket and Richard’s constant support, Erlich would likely start throwing his weight around, and they would find out how fragile their five-person democracy could be. Everyone, including Richard, was aware of that. The other guys assumed it was why Richard tolerated Jared sharing his big sleeping bag and murmuring German endearments at him all night, when truthfully, Richard simply liked the warmth and didn’t mind the endearments. After a year now he barely noticed.

~~~

Back at the ranger’s station, they had visitors. Two guys in their bedroom, kicking around their sleeping rolls to look for stuff. Both raised guns as soon as they saw they weren’t alone.

“Whoah whoah whoah! Calm down there!” said Erlich.

“No, you calm down big guy,” said the taller of the two. “And you too, skinny,” he added to Jared, who had his own rifle raised. 

“Alright. We’re calm. We’re all calm here,” said Richard, eyes wide. “We’re just, you know, surprised. To see you. To see  _ anyone _ . We thought…” 

The shorter guy’s face split into a grin, and he lowered his gun. “I know, right? We thought we were the only ones left.”

“I know!” Richard said with an answering grin. 

Everyone lowered their weapons as they marvelled at the fact that they weren’t completely alone in the world. 

The levity in the room lasted for about two seconds.

“Hey. Stop eating my crackers,” Gilfoyle told the taller one. He had Gilfoyle’s blue plastic baggie of crackers sticking out of his pocket, and he’d just munched two at a time.

“These crackers? I just found them, and I’m pretty hungry.” 

“Go find some other crackers. Those are mine.”

All traces of good humour vanished from the guy’s face. He raised his gun again, looked Gilfoyle straight in the eye, and ate another cracker.

“Hey hey!” Richard raised his hands. “You know what? Keep the crackers. We just found some more ourselves. Gilfoyle, you can have my share. But hey, it’s getting late and we’re all tired, so, you know, maybe you could just get going. Take the crackers and go. There’s an empty fire station not too far, just North of Boronda Lake, and the grounds are all zombie-free. You’re welcome!”

The two strangers looked at each other. 

“Okay,” said the short one. “We’ll get out of your hair. Doesn’t look like you have much here anyways.” 

Richard was pitifully grateful the guys hadn’t found the porn collection, but he worried now that if they hung around the area they might go on to find the traps and nets they’d laid out for food. 

“Just one question before we go. You don’t have any ladies around here, are you?”

“Not unless you count Jared,” Gilfoyle said.

“The skinny one? Hm. I guess he’d do. Don’t suppose you’d like to make some kind of lending arrangement-”

“Get the hell out,” Richard interrupted. “Take your crackers and fuck the fuck off.”

Watching the strangers finally leave, Dinesh said, “Real diplomatic, Richard.”

“Something tells me diplomacy is gonna be a challenge with those two,” said Erlich.

That night, Richard practiced cleaning one of the hand guns Jared had just taught them all how to use. He used to get palpitations to look at the thing. It was a heavy realization to know that it was time he got used to it. 

“I think. I've been thinking,” he said to Jared, who waited in their sleeping bag for him. “Those guys aren't gonna be the last ones we see here. There'll be more. We were lucky to be out here in the wilderness in the first place, but everyone who managed to survive the city is going to have the same idea. Maybe we should think about leaving.” 

He looked to Jared, relying on him to tell him if the idea was completely nuts. But Jared’s brow was furrowed in thought. 

“I mean,” Richard continued. “Maybe we should go out and do what we're doing now. Hunting and gathering. Except instead of clearing out campsites we could go and clear out towns. Figure out how to kill zombies in groups - Gilfoyle already has some great ideas.” 

Jared was nodding now. They’d bounced around some strategies for eliminating zombies in swaths, all it would take is some preparation. 

“Because right now we're just, you know, hiding. Hiding and surviving. Which is fine. But this place is going to attract more people who just want to hide. And I think. Maybe. We should go out and fight. Try to connect with other people out there. See if we can, you know, rebuild civilization. Before…”

He trailed off, but he knew Jared understood. They needed to rebuild civilization while it still lingered fresh in their memories. Before they all forgot. 

Jared supported him and surprisingly Erlich agreed as well. For once Gilfoyle and Dinesh were both on board. 

The retrieved their traps, packed their supplies into the Aviato van, and left the very next day.

~~~

Jared killed a man in Ladera.

Things had been going so well. They took a less-travelled route out of the park, clearing out roads and houses along the way. The only large group of zombies they encountered was near Palo Alto U - a mass of students, they presumed. They led them into a nearby horse corral and trapped them. Then it was just a matter of letting them out one by one to the slaughter, like farm animals. Erlich was dying to get his hands on a wrecking ball to make the job easier, while Dinesh and Gilfoyle were drawing up plans for a slicing machine made of modified farm equipment. 

Once they passed a baseball diamond and a few houses close enough together to count as a neighborhood, they realized that there were no zombies around, not even in the abandoned cars. Maybe someone had the same idea as they did.

Then they came along a road flanked by piles of zombies pinned onto enormous spikes, like a double column of gruesome totem poles. And then they met the humans who would do such a thing.

“Drive! Fucking drive! Floor it for fuck’s sake!!” Erlich shouted at Richard, no doubt regretting that he’d taken a break from the wheel just a mile out of town.  

“Why would that guy eat a monkey’s paw?” Dinesh said, more than a little dazed.

“That wasn’t monkey meat, Dinesh.” Gilfoyle informed him.

“Are you sure? It wasn’t like, a brown monkey?”  

Gilfoyle sighed. “Okay, it was an ape paw. Apes aren’t monkeys, dumbass.” 

Richard noted that it really would take the end of the world for Gilfoyle to say a kind thing to Dinesh. 

But apparently the crazy brown-person eating cult wasn’t content to let them drive away. One of them jumped onto the van, hanging off the driver’s side door, trying to bash the window in. 

Jared leaned across Richard’s lap and shot the guy in the forehead. The window shattered but Richard managed to maintain control of the van. They swerved and headed into Palo Alto.  

~~~ 

They reached a blockade at the highway. Where they were expecting zombies, instead they found… people. Women actually. With Monica among them

“Richard? Erlich? You guys survived?”

“Oh my god, Monica! It's so good to see you!!” Richard said when she stepped out from behind the blockade, along with a handful of fit, square-ish women. 

Richard got to hug her, but then she straightened up, affecting a kind of distant sternness Richard had never seen from her before.

“Welcome back to Palo Alto, guys,” she said. “Come on in. We're doing okay. We’ve made a lot of progress with Laurie in charge.” 

They followed Monica past the blockade, towards the city centre. It looked like some kind of temple was being built there. Which made sense. Even on the lonely stretch they'd travelled, they'd seem no less than five strange shrines. Cults were the new norm, it seemed.

They reached the towering half-built temple.

“Looks nice. Yeah. Um. Looks good. Except, you know,” Richard struggled to mention something he'd noticed since they passed the highway. “Where are all the men?”

Monica sighed and rolled her eyes. 

“We had to kill them all. Well, almost all of them. Things got pretty bad. When you see Laurie, just don't ask. She knows you and I can vouch for you. I think you'll be okay.” 

“Okay…?” said Richard, because there's nothing anybody else could think to say. 

“Yeah. Okay except you won't be able to vote. Or carry weapons,” Monica said. 

“I for one am happy to support a firm but benevolent matriarchy,” said Jared as he handed over his guns and knives, along with the other guys.

“Yeah. And no gathering in groups. No talking to each other basically. And. Well...”

Monica couldn't finish her sentence, but when a couple of her imposing friends started slapping shackles onto their feet, Richard got the picture. 

“This matriarchy is not as benevolent as I'd hoped,” commented Jared sadly.

They took them in one by one to meet Laurie, who would decide their fate. 

When it was Jared’s turn, he waved to Richard with the tip of his fingers, mouthing a silent  _ good bye.  _

~~~

Richard woke up with a gasp. He sat straight up in bed, his top bunk bed in Erlich’s ranch house, Palo Alto. 

Sweet Episcopalian Jesus, it had all been a dream!

He wiped his forehead checked his phone, trying to shake it off. 

Later, at the breakfast table, while he ate cereal and milk, Jared sat down to join him with some tea. 

“Jared?”

“Yes Richard?”

“I think I’ve decided against the camping retreat.”

“Okay. You’re the boss, boss,” said Jared. “Would you like to consider the hotel/spa option instead?”

“Ah, sure. Okay. Or, maybe we don’t need to do any team building after all. I think we’re enough of a team, don’t you?”

“Of course!” Jared said sunnily.

“Alright then. So, what’s on the schedule for today?”

“Three meetings and our quarterly progress review. I know you’ve been putting it off but we really shouldn’t ignore it.”

Richard nodded. “It’s okay. We’ll get it done. Thanks Jared.” He continued eating his breakfast. Plain cereal and milk had never tasted so good. 

Whereas yesterday Richard had been itching for a break, to go out and go somewhere, anywhere, today he was fine where he was. Suddenly things didn’t seem so bad. 

It could always be worse. 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes haha sorry for the silly turn at the end. This was supposed to be part of a collection of hopeful stories, but man this is the most hopeful message I could muster.


End file.
